Yang over at Learn Mandarin Now is spoiling me with all these guest posts. I’ve been struggling to find something that suitable for beginners lately – everything I stumble across ends up being intermediate. But this is a very good place for beginners to start reading chéngyǔ (成语 idiom) stories, because you’ll get an introduction to a few words that you often see in this kind of “long long ago, far far away” fable.

In the very first sentence, we run across three words of interest. One, 从前 cóngqián, means “a long time ago”, your classic storybook beginning.

The second, 楚国人 chǔguórén, means “a man from the State of Chu“. The State of Chu was a Chinese jurisdictional division during the Zhou Dynasty (1046 – 256 BC). In stories that reference pre-1900 China, you’ll often see references to places that existed in ancient times. Encyclopedia Britannica tells us: “China itself was at the time divided into a series of small duke states, all of which theoretically owed allegiance to the Zhou dynasty, although the Zhou rulers had long since been unable to exercise control over more than their own fiefs.” Anyhoo, the third word is 宝剑 bǎojiàn, which means “a double-edged sword”. How fable-y is that, huh?

I’d also like to draw your attention to the word 移动 yìdòng, meaning “to be moving” or “mobile”. This word is quite common – it’s used to refer to people who move often, and also to “mobile” phones (the cell provider “China Mobile” has this in their Chinese name: 中国移动).

Okay, let’s do this. And thanks again to Yang! Lots of work for some paltry backlinks.

Long ago, there was a man from the State of Chu who loved his sword very much. One day, he was sitting in his boat preparing to cross a river, when he accidentally dropped his sword into the water. He immediately made a notch on the side of the boat at the place where his dear sword fell. When he returned close to shore, he re-entered the water just beneath the notch he made, looking for his sword. Naturally, he wasn’t able to find it.

The sword was already gone because the boat and the river were in motion. This idiom is used to describe a person who sticks to rigid rules without considering a changing environment [or describes an action made pointless by changing circumstances].

Good spot – nowhere in the story does it say “On the side of the boat”. I just couldn’t find a way in English to explain what that sentence meant without adding that to the translation. Didn’t want anyone to think he’d tried to make a notch on the water.

I don’t think 记号 is a “notch” in this case but more of a “marker”. I think it can be translated that he tried to put a marker in the water where the sword was. In any case, he has to be pretty stupid to think a marker would stay in one place in the water without an anchor.

“nick the boat to seek the sword” (make a notch on the side of a moving boat to locate where a sword dropped overboard)– an action made pointless by changed circumstances.

In Yu Hua’s New York Times editorial on censorship in China, he likens the Party’s invitation of criticism from the people and the subsequent censorship of public blog posts to this idiom; the result was that no real criticisms could be found in public forums.

If you don’t have the free Pleco app yet, I highly recommend it as it handles idioms quite well, even if you only know the pinyin (as in this case)!

Good story and I bet the man felt bad but I think it would be a little better if they told a little bit of why he lovedhis sourd so much because I don’t see much of a cause if he loved it so much at the age of sourds and stuff so why dous he like it a lot is my question but after all it was a pretty good story

I love your site. I have a question. I come here to practice often, and now I run my cursor over the characters and the definition isn’t showing up. Is it showing up from your end. I want to know if it is your website or my computer. Thanks

Otherwise this site is awesome it is helping me with my reading and character recognition skills a lot. Thanks again!!

Today,try to find a wet which can show the short stories in chinese for my two girls. Accidently find this, very nice!
I am a bilingual chinese. And learning English now!
Hopefully can learn from you guys.
Thank you!

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